Hi guys, last Friday I had the incredible opportunity to be a Keynote speaker at the Kern Behavioral Health and Recovery Services annual Recovery Conference.
I was asked by a couple people to share my speech, so here it is. This is my story with mental illness and my thoughts on what recovery means.
Fair warning...it was a 15 minute speech so it's a little long.
Recovery in Motion
Hi everyone! I am so grateful and
incredibly humbled to be able to stand here today and talk with you about
recovery and my journey with it.
My story begins about four years ago
when I was 15 years old. I was a Freshman in High School and mental illness
never crossed my mind, that is, until I started struggling with it.
My symptoms started out gradually
and progressively became worse. About the time my Freshman year was ending I
started experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression. I did not know what
was happening to me, but I felt like it wasn’t right and so I hid it from
everyone around me.
As my sophomore year was starting
the depression was getting worse. I knew I needed help, but I was embarrassed
and I didn’t know how to talk about it; so, I wrote my mom a note and left it
on her pillow one night.
I was blessed with parents who took
what was happening seriously and my mom found a therapist for me to start
seeing. This would be the therapist that I would stay with for the following
two years. Despite getting on medication and being in therapy once a week my
life started to unravel as I became more and more unstable.
A few months after starting therapy
for anxiety and depression I started experiencing psychotic symptoms that
slowly became more severe. I was having auditory and visual hallucinations, I
was delusional, and I became paranoid. I was given the diagnosis of
Schizoaffective Disorder. That disorder began dictating my life.
I had missed a significant number of
days of my Sophomore year due to depression, but as the end of the year drew
nearer my psychotic symptoms became such that I had to go on Home Study.
In May, when my classmates were taking their finals I was
being admitted to what was then known as Good Samaritan Hospital for my first
psychiatric hospitalization. In June I was hospitalized again this time in
UCLA’s Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital. I came out relatively stable for the
summer.
When August rolled around I wanted to go back to school. This
launched me into my second psychotic episode. Most days I would end up
hallucinating in a teacher’s classroom and the administration would have to
call my mom to come take me home. I lasted about two weeks before going back on
Home Study for the remainder of my Junior Year.
This time around the psychosis was worse than the first. I
could barely read or write clearly. Some days I couldn’t think or talk clearly.
My safety was a big concern and so I was unable to stay home alone or go
anywhere without being watched by someone who knew about what was happening
inside my mind. I felt like a prisoner. A prisoner to my mind and a prisoner in
my home.
In December of 2014 I was hospitalized for the third time in
UCLA. I left that stay less stable than my previous one. When my doctor came in
to discharge me he told me I was going home because “there is nothing else we
can do for you here.” That was incredibly discouraging to me, but it was also
one of the driving factors to make me fight.
I have been told more times than I can count that I am a
“complicated case.” I was told at one point that I should expect to have to be
hospitalized every year or so of my life to be re-stabilized. For a long time I
thought that was what my life was going to be, but I never wanted to fully
resign myself to it. I had a choice to make. I chose ignore those who told me I
could not doing something and I chose to fight. So I let my psychiatrist put me
on what was probably the 20th new medication and I showed up to
every therapy appointment.
Do you know what happened? Things didn’t get better, not for
a long time. In fact, they got worse for a little bit.
Around August of 2015 right as my Senior year was about to
start the psychotic symptoms started becoming less and less, but my depression
was bad again. You see, I had a secret. A secret of something that had happened
two years prior. A secret I had dissociated from for about a year and kept
quiet for another year, but my secret was about to kill me. I couldn’t say it
out loud so I typed my therapist an email late one night.
What I told him was that in Spring of 2013, right before all
my symptoms started seemingly out of no where, I had been raped by a man from
my church. I didn’t know what dissociation was at the time, but my therapist
explained it to me as the mind being a powerful tool. My mind made me forget
about the trauma for a short time to protect itself from something I didn’t
have the capacity to handle. The memories were still there, they just
manifested as anxiety, depression, and psychotic symptoms.
All of a sudden all these little things we didn’t have
answers for made sense. The pieces of the puzzle were all in place and we
finally had a picture. I was grateful to just be believed. My biggest fear was
that became of my history with hallucinations and delusions I wouldn’t be
believed, but that was never the case. Telling my therapist about that assault
opened the door for me to start working on the root of my problems and from
there things started getting a bit better.
After telling my therapist I was hospitalized for the fourth
time in UCLA. This was the first time I was being admitted for suicidal
thoughts instead of psychosis. The diagnosis of Schizoaffective was taken away
and labeled a misdiagnosis. My new one was PTSD – Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder.
I was in UCLA for three weeks. I came home the day before
Senior year started. I went to school for three weeks, but refused to talk to
my therapist about the assault. I became actively suicidal and was sent back to
UCLA for my fifth and final hospitalization.
I was there for another three weeks, but this time something
had to change. I couldn’t keep living like this. I was three months away from
turning 18. If I got admitted again the next time I would be in the adult unit
and that terrified me.
So the decision was made and on September 27, 2015 I entered
Destinations to Recovery, a residential treatment center in Topanga, California.
Destinations was the absolute best thing that could have
happened to me. I was there for 10 weeks. In that time I worked with some
therapists who taught me what a good therapist/client relationship can look
like. They taught me how to trust. They taught me my life didn’t have to be a
revolving door of hospitals. They taught me how to fight, how to believe in
myself, and they taught me I was worth it.
My progress at Destinations was multi-faceted. I progressed
in therapy to the point I was able to tell multiple therapists about my trauma.
I learned how to trust others and gained a best friend out of my first
roommate. I also learned how to have fun and feel safe again. We did multiple
activities that were both fun and had a therapeutic benefit including surfing
lessons, taking care of horses, and expressive art groups.
I spent both my 18th birthday and Thanksgiving in
Destinations. Thanksgiving especially was a really special day for me. All the
families came, the chef made an awesome dinner, and we all had a good time
together. The special part for me was how happy I was that day. I had spent the
last two Thanksgivings psychotic and I felt like I had come so far.
I came out of Destinations in December of 2015 a completely
different person. I was more stable than I had been in over two years, I was
happy, I was strong, and I was determined to continue my progress. One of my
first accomplishments was going back to school for my last semester. Not only
did I graduate with my class, but I was in the top 75 of my class out of 500
students and I gave commencement address at the graduation ceremony.
Normally that is where I would conclude when asked to share
“my story,” but today’s theme is “Recovery in Motion” so I wanted to be a
little bit more transparent with you about what recovery means to me.
I used to think recovery and being recovered meant that one
day I would get to a place where I would wake up and go about my life with
anything relating to mental illness just a distant memory from another
lifetime.
I have since come to the understanding that at least for me,
that couldn’t be farther from the truth, because I continue to fight my mental
illnesses.
I still struggle with my PTSD. I’m hypervigilant, I have
flashbacks and nightmares. I have an anxious mind and I don’t sleep enough. I
have not had a depressive episode in two years, but I still feel the depression
sometimes.
These are things I have to deal with, but my life today is
about more than just my symptoms. I am doing things that two years ago I would
have never dreamed possible. I’m a college student at CSUB. I made the Dean’s
List last year. I am the President of a Club and part of Health Outreach
Committees on campus. I teach the three year olds at my church. I am a speaker
and a writer, and I volunteer with the KBHRS Transitional Age Youth team.
Now I’m not telling you these things about me to say “oh look
what I can do.” No. I am telling you this to let you know that struggling with
mental illness doesn’t have to be the beginning and the end to your story.
Your life might be a little harder and you might have to do
things a little differently, but that’s okay. I still see a therapist every
week. I still take medication. I attend an awesome support group at Riverlakes.
I make sure to schedule into my planner time to rest, time to reflect, and time
to recharge. I carry coping skills with me wherever I go and if life become to
overwhelming I give up one of the activities I am involved in, even if it is
something I love, because my mental health must come above all else.
Guys, I am not special. Well, my mom tells me I’m special,
but the things I have done and continue to do in order to maintain my mental
health and live the life I want are simple. They are steps any one of us can
take.
I have come to learn that my past and my illnesses do not
have to be a weakness. I choose to use them as an asset. Sure, I will admit
that from my mental illnesses have come some of my biggest weaknesses, but I
have also gained strength and opportunities because of them I could have gotten
no other way.
So today I want to challenge you to take a look into your own
life. Whether you struggle with mental illness or some other adversity. Look at
what you view as your biggest deficit or weakness. Now look a little deeper and
see how that struggle has made you stronger. Use it to your advantage. It might
not be easy to find, but every situation has at least two sides.
In that, is where I believe recovery comes from. Not in an
absence of symptoms, but in a new way of viewing and managing our struggles.
The power is within each of us to succeed and live a fulfilling life. You just
have to find it.